Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Notable is the placement of High Fidelity and Project Sansar (which presumably is what Tipatat meant he used the Second Life logo): Square in the "Social" category. However, from what we know of High Fidelity and Sansar, they're not only aiming for the Social market, but also the Distribution market and also the 3D Tools/Engines market. But it's an understandable confusion on Tipatat's part, because thirteen years after launch, the general market still isn't sure what Second Life is supposed to be. And it points to the problem these two would-be successors to Second Life both face:

Friday, March 11, 2016

Surprisingly buff Linden Lab CEO Ebbe Altberg recently appeared as an avatar in Second Life to share some details about Second Life 2, i.e. the VR-enabled Project Sansar -- several revelations likely to be bombshells to many:

Today you need Maya to work in Sansar, this will change in June, when they open up Beta access to a broader set of creators.

Sansar will be opened to the public at the end of the year.

LL is now working on integrating the HTV Vive VR headset with Sansar, the headset also used for Steam VR and Ebbe expects it to work next week.

Sansar is aiming for an age range of 13+ but there will be content ratings.

Right now Sansar is being build for PC, Windows specifically, Oculus and Vive HMD. They are preparing for Android and iOS... There is a streaming solution for Sansar like we’ve seen in the past being offered by third parties... A Mac viewer is described as going to be looked at somewhere further along the line.

There will be an exchange system that allows you to transfer Linden Dollars to whatever the Sansar currency will be.

There will be lots of different building tools in Sansar but LL will strongly support 3rd party tools and thus a common file format... But there will also be tools inside Sansar such as terrain and layout tools, but also basic object manipulation tools so you can take assets and arrange a scene.

Sansar uses a sort of ‘baking’ progress, so in stead of building something ‘live’ and seeing it work right away, like we do in SL, you have to ‘publish’ what you’ve build.

Much more from Jo Yardley here, view machinima video of his SL talk courtesy Mal Burns below. Reading between the lines, the likeliest points of controversy and interest are these:

Friday, February 12, 2016

Ironically or coincidentally enough, Ebbe Altberg started sharing screenshots from Project Sansar roughly around the time Amazon announced Lumberyard. Which as reader Issa Heckroth suggests, inevitably means 3D graphics developers interested in the next generation of VR-compatible platforms will be doing compare and contrasts.

I don't mean to knock Ebbe really, he seems like such a nice guy, but... Short version: You mean it took a specially selected team of Maya artists and a brand new game engine to put out this vague hazy screen shot, that tells us little or nothing about anything, except maybe the people who produced it.

The long version is much more ranty, but still important to read, because these are exactly the kind of 3D content creators who need to get convinced Sansar is All That, especially against free competitors like Amazon's Lumberyard:

Around June 2016 or soon after the Lab will probably allow people to start to apply for Project Sansar in some way. [Beyond those already in closed Alpha.

By June 2016 the Lab will be inviting hundreds of creators possibly to get things moving.

Between July 2016 and September 2016+ the Lab will increase the number of people who can come in month after month to continue test/develop Project Sansar.

If things go according to plan the Lab plans to open the door for anyone to come in and play with Project Sansar around December 2016 – January 2017 (Open Beta).

So as many NWN readers predicted, Sansar won't see the light of day before a new American President is elected. I would have guessed open beta this Summer, but looks like I was wrong. Could be frustrating for Oculus Rift fans eager to try it out sooner. But for remaining Second Life fans, that's some good guys:

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

The third wave of virtual reality products are hitting the commercial market this year, but how will Second Life, a product of VR's second wave, fare? With over 240 of New World Notes readers voting in our survey, here's how many Second Life users you expect come the closing of this year:

A plurality of some 1 in 3 respondents expect Second Life's user base to stay about the same (roughly 900,000 monthly users), but just over half of you think we'll see Second Life usage decline -- by a little or a lot. (With almost 1 in 5 predicting a loss of nearly half its current user base.) On the other side of the ledger, 20% are more optimistic, hoping to see some user growth this year.

Who's right? I generally don't resist the wisdom of the crowds, and in this case, I think the majority is roughly right: Given the launch of Oculus Rift and Valve's Vive, not to mention Linden Lab's own Project Sansar, I think it's inevitable we're going to see a pretty sharp drop in Second Life usage.

However, if Linden Lab reacts quickly and spends some money on new SL development and marketing, that's not a foregone conclusion: